It turns out that re-sealing an re-coating the roof was a pretty easy.

Ha!

That’s a blatant lie, sorry about that. Let’s just say it’s pretty straight-forward, but it does involve a lot of grunt work. I’m just glad I didn’t have to completely remove the old coating and scrape and prime the base aluminum. But once a plan was in place, things moved along nicely — if you find yourself having to do this, know that it isn’t difficult or tricky…just laboooorious. With that said, here are the steps I worked through to get’er done:

Scraped away old sealant/caulk and gave then entire roof a good cleaning, using warm water, Dawn detergent (concentrate) and elbow grease — on hands and knees! Time to complete: ~3 hours

Rinsed the entire surface with a hose, squeegeed away most of the water, towel dried the rest of it, then let it dry overnight.
Time to complete: ~1 hour

Masked off the entire inside/outside of the roof seam, leaving 2 in. of space on either side of the seam. I also masked off around all of the objects protruding from the roof (i.e. vents, lights et al).
Time to complete: ~2 hours

Spackled and brushed a hefty coat of the Dyco seam sealer over all of the masked areas. The sealer was actually easy to work with, but I was forced to use both a putty knife and a thick 2.5 in. brush to apply it. It has the consistency of viscous marshmallows, and the brush wasn’t rigid enough to scoop it out of the can, but it flowed well when on a horizontal surface. I’m not sure of the actual square footage applied, but I used an entire 1 gallon can of the stuff, applied as a thick coat. Some folks have said they apply 2 coats, and I bought an extra gallon just in case, but I was pretty liberal with it, and didn’t think a second coat was needed.
Time to complete: ~5 hours

Let the sealer dry overnight (~ 24 hours).

Applied a lap sealant to all of the parts that passed through the roof, such as rivets, screw heads, mounting brackets etc. The lap sealant worked great, as it flowed about 0.5″ – 1.0″ around each object, giving it good coverage. I let all of this dry overnight too.
Time to completion: ~2 hours

Applied the first coat of the Anvil #400 roof coating. Starting at the front of Edelweiss, and using a 2.5 in hand brush, I applied the coating around all of the lights and other objects that were a pain to paint around. Then I switched to a 9 in. roller, which worked great for the large areas. This coating also had a marshmallowy consistency, but it was a lot easier to apply than the seam sealer. I worked my way to the back of the beast, and ended up using about 2 gallons of the 4 gallon bucket.
Time to completion: ~5 hours

The final coat was completed today, and it was a lot easier to slather the stuff on. I only used about a gallon on the second coat, but coverage was great. Now it will dry overnight, I’ll remove the masking tape tomorrow, and it will be complete.
Time to completion: ~2 hours

Side notes:

The sealer stinks to high heaven, and it off-gases like crazy, but I was fortunate enough to be able to do everything outside. If you do this inside, wear an oxygen tank and full-on mask (or just make sure your space is ventilated :)

Both products are messy but clean-up easily with soap and water (be sure to wear latex gloves)

Wear sunglasses if it’s a sunny day and you’re outside — your eyes will thank you.

Products Used

This was the original product that was applied to Barth’s when they were made, but it was tricky to find. Anvil’s site will tell you any Sherwin-Williams can special order it for you, but every store I called said they could no longer sell it, as they have a competing product (which I believe is the Kool Seal line of products, but I haven’t seen the best reviews for it, so I wanted to get the Anvil product if I could). It turns out Anvil has their own store from which you can buy their products directly — just call the number on their site, tell them what you want, and they’ll hook you up and ship it directly to you.

Refinishing the roof (with no discovered leaks!) was the last major project I needed to finish. Now we’re down to the small details, and making sure all of the systems are in working order — primarily water/plumbing, as everything else is good to go.